fine line portrait realism. Him, Fred-
dy Negrete, Brian Everett and all of
those guys are all innovators of that
style. Jack and Freddy are out in Cali-
fornia and with all the shops on ev-
ery corner. Jack would take like four
hours to do a portrait. He was doing
portraits when no one else was do-
ing portraits. He made good money
because it was in demand and no
one else was doing it. He says now
it’s in just about every shop on the
corner.
The Hispanic guys who do black and
gray style will do a portrait in about
an hour or two for $100. Jack I think
still gets $300 an hour but it takes him about four hours. So that’s how
it’s going to work its way out. The guys are either going to have to reduce
what they’re used to making to compete with the guys next to them or
have to find an edge to keep them apart from everybody. It’s tough and
it’s scary when that’s all you’ve done all your life and you get older. What
can we do? You can resist, you can boycott this or boycott that but unless
everybody does it nothing’s going to happen.
That’s one of the arguments I have with this guy, he’s a good friend of
mine. I love him to death but we have different opinions on it. He’s so
strict and is such a stickler and history buff; he loves where we came from
and he’s trying to keep that way. It’s like, you’re not going to be able to
do it by yourself. So you can resist or you can join in. You have to join in. If
you resist you’re working yourself out before your time because you don’t
want to comply with the new standard. I’d like to see it maintain a little
bit of its original form but it’s so far from that now that there’s no way
168